Anaylsis of the Film: Fight Club

For years David Fincher has directed some of the most stylish and inventive thrillers in American cinema. His credits include: Aliens 3, Seven, The Game and Fight Club. Each of these films has been not only aesthetically pleasing and fun to watch but each has commented on society, making the viewers think outside norms and analyze their world. Fight Club is no exception; it is a multi-layered film with many subplots and themes, but the primarily it a surrealistically description of the status of the American male at the end of the 20th century. David Flincher's movie, Fight Club, depicts how consumerism has caused the emasculatization of the modern male and tells a tale of liberation from a corporate controlled society.

In the movie Brad Pitt comments on the new way of life, "We are products of lifestyle obsession; murder, crime, poverty do not concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with five hundred cannels and a designer name on my underwear." The film, Fight Club illustrates the consumer culture in which the 20th century male lives in and how it's deconstruction of individuality. The film gives numerous examples of this; the main character of the film (Ed Norton) asks when looking through an IKEA catalog, "What kind of plates define me as a person." He not asking what personal characteristics and attributes define him but what possession most accurately does. Furthermore, Ed Norton's character has no name; he is only referred to as the 90's everyman, the IKEA man. The film demonstrates the extensive emphases the consumer based culture of the 20th century on individualism and values associated with being a man. Corporations have replaced personal qualities with corporate logos; the modern male cannot be anything unless he has certain products in his possession. No longer does one own things, his things own him. The contemporary male is a slave of the IKEA nesting instinct. The main character absence of a name...

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...Fincher’s ​
FightClub.​
Released in 1999 by Fox Studios, it stars Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and
Helena Bonham Carter. The film is a contemporary art piece that speaks the language of the
modern emasculated­macho man. It contains considerable amounts of violence that some would
call gratuitous or senseless, but is in fact an attempt to speak metaphorically towards a deeper
meaning. ​
FightClub​
, like all art, is a reflection of our culture. It attempts to speak to us about
the state of our society by telling the tale of an individual’s development from “boyhood” to
“manhood.” The story is a wild ride through the psychological turmoil that is necessary for the
development of masculinity in modern culture. Although a generalized interpretation of the film
could yield a perception of sexism, machismo, and ignorant violence, a more patient ​
examination
leads to a deeper realization of the film’s powerful meaning.
This paper will discuss how ​
FightClub​
, when properly examined, is less of a meditation
on violence and sexism than it is an exploration of the journey a man goes through to discover
his true identity. Using metaphorical themes, unorthodox storytelling, and creative
mise­en­scene, ​
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...﻿FightClub
By Chuck Palahniuk
In this assignment I will be analyzing some of the most interesting elements in the book “FightClub” explained with Maffesolis Retraditionalization-theory. I will draw lines to our main topic Consumerism. The book is written by Chuck Palahniuk and was first published in Great Britain in 1997. As the book includes a few different topics, I will be focusing on the development of fightclub and project Mayhem.
After the presentation of Anthony Giddens’ thoughts, which was based on the detraditionalization of late modern society, came Michel Maffesoli’s appearance with a new theory that turned the discussion of late modern society’s processions upside down. As the sociologist Anthony Giddens saw tendencies of detraditionalization saw Michel Maffesoli a trend of retraditionalization as a reaction of late modern society. Maffesoli declares the following: “The conformism of youth, the passion for likeness within groups or ‘tribes’, the phenomena of fashion, standardized culture, up to and including unisexualization of appearance, permits us to claim that what we are witnessing is the loss of the idea of the individual in favour of a much less distinct mass.”1 Said with other words, we live in a society where the individualizationprocess has come to an end. Instead individuals seek for answers, stability, meaning and identity through these groups and communities...

...﻿Grace Tobin
American History Through FilmFilm Review
April 29, 2014
FightClub, a 1999 dark comedic film, finds originality in it’s celebration of violence in which the heroes form an underground community with the license to commit crime, drink, smoke, and most importantly, beat one another up. In this film Edward Norton stars as your typical representation of the depressed, over worked and over anxious man. His life is dull and repetitive and his job sends him spiraling into a lifeless depression. He attempts to find condolence in attending a 12-step program, where he hugs the less fortunate and finds catharsis in their suffering. Ironically, his first meeting is for post surgical victims of testicular cancer, since the movie is essentially about finding man hood.
While flying on yet another dreary flight for his job, we meet Tyler Durden, an interesting character to say the least. When the narrator's apartment catches fire, leaving him with no belongings and no home, he turns to Tyler for help. And with this friendship, the fightclub is born. Tyler and the narrator establish the secret society to find freedom and self realization through beating other men, and each other, to a bloody pulp.
So what is this all about? What does this movie teach us? Surely, this is not a bunch of bloody, testosterone driven nonsense. The film...

...FightClub Movie Analysis
Usually, men are associated with things that are brutal, sharp, emotionless, rational, dirty, and
crude, whereas women are associated with more elegant, beautiful, smooth, emotional,
compassionate, clean, and natural things. Men are the providers, and women are the receivers
but fightclub represents these differently.
In a consumer-driven society, everyone becomes a receiver, and by association, men assume
some aspects of femininity.
David Fincher has directed some of the most influential thrillers in American film history. His
works include: Aliens 3, The Game ,FightClub and the Game .
In the movie Tyler Durden talks about the modern world, "We are products of a
lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty do not concern me. What concerns me is celebrity
magazines, television with five hundred cannels and a designer name on my underwear."
Technically, FightClub shows the consumer culture in which the 20th century male lives in and
how it is a disintegration of individuality. The film gives quite a few examples of this; the main
character of the film asks himself while looking through an IKEA catalog, "What kind of plates
define me as a person." He isn't asking what personal characteristics define him, but what
possession most...

...movie FightClub shows that violence is inevitable no matter where you are. Society labels the use of violence negatively, but FightClub shows a deeper view of the use of violence. Violence is not always irrational, sometimes there is a cause behind the action. People would rather blame violence on materialistic things and events then realize they are the cause for violence. The violence shown in the movie FightClub is portrayed as a work of art by three important factors; the glorification of violence, the escaping of life, and a double identity.
Violence was glorified all throughout FightClub. The movie made it seem like violence could be something used for good. The fights in FightClub were not random fights. The club was organized with FightClub rules; all the fights were planned. There is no victim in FightClub; everybody was there because of their own will. The trust in the community and the agreements club members shared also glorified violence. In FightClub, the use of violence released people's stress, work pressure, and anger. After the fights, they would feel mettle, fearless, and free. Violence was organized and agreements were involved. Trust was...

...The Psychology of FightClub
The movie FightClub features a story that, on the surface, appears to be about an underground boxing club, but goes much deeper. It focuses around one man, the Narrator, whose name is never revealed. The Narrator, like everyone else in the world, is looking for fulfillment in life, but tries to obtain it by odd means. His first obsession that we notice seems ordinary and quite common: his IKEA furniture collections. It then starts to get a little bit more unusual when he begins attending therapy sessions concerning serious medical problems in which he does not have such as various forms of cancer. Since he is still unfulfilled, he then moves on to creating an underground "FightClub" with his recent acquaintance, Tyler Durden. This is where his obsessions become extremely unhealthy and abnormalities occur. The Narrator, throughout the movie, is seen to have many psychological issues that lay a path to is inevitable mental breakdown. Although there are many problems that the Narrator faces, the main issues are that of his masculinity, breaking away from conformity, and the slow uncovering of his severe Dissociative Identity Disorder which goes unnoticed until the final moments of this twist filled movie.
FightClub presents the argument that men in today's society have been reduced to a generation of men that do...

...FightClub is an important film revealing the results of civilization which causes emerged new ego far from real ego. We examined this popular rich content movie looking from psychoanalytic perspective.
This film expresses an important Freudian theme, Oedipal Complex. The relation between characters; Marla, Tyler and Jack shows us that clearly.
Jack (the narrator) is an unsatisfied and frustrated person in his job, suffering from insomnia and having consumerism attitudes making far from his insticts. In therapy groups that he goes for his insomnia treatment, Jack meets Marla. Jack creates an Idealized Ego known as Tyler Durden to do all of the things that he feels that he can not do, or is too weak to do. Tyler is portrayed in the movie as a character that is a flawless representation of male mankind; therefore, the actor playing him is Brad Pitt, the sexiest man nowadays. Tyler destroys the capitalist structures that pushed Jack away from the Real in the beginning. Tyler is an idealized ego, also since he makes real Jack’s desires, he is an id.
The narrator ( Jack) of FightClub is fixated in the phallic stage. Symptoms of phallic fixations are sexual inhibition, fear of castration, homoerotic tendency. The entire film is permeated with castration anxiety and phallic imagery, including the subliminal penis flashed across the screen and the dildo in Marla’s...

...FightClub Diagnosis
Sarah Vance
Butler University
FightClub
Question A
I decided to observe the movie FightClub and analyze the actor Edward Norton, who plays a nameless first person, I am going to call this character the Narrator. Edward Norton plays a young professional who hates his job as a car manufacturer. The Narrator seeks out treatment for his insomnia and to help cope with his miserable life. The doctor suggests that he attends a support group for testicular cancer to see what true misery is and to show the Narrator that his life is not so bad. The nameless Narrative starts to attend additional support groups to relieve his pain and help him sleep at night. Although, he does not have any of the associated afflictions of the people in the support groups, he attends these groups as a means to let out his emotions, which in turn is allowing him to sleep. However, the use of these support groups is ruined when he meets a woman named Marla Singer, who is played by Helen Carter. She is also a fake attendee of these support group meetings. This disrupts the impact of the stories the Narrator hears from the groups and makes it difficult for him let out his emotions when Marla is there. After Marla, the Narrator next meets a man named Tyler Durden, who is played by Brad Pitt. The Narrator does not know that Tyler is a hallucination of his other personality. From the...